Considerations When Working with the Connector for Notes®

This section addresses important issues in using an Notes® connection.

Activity Command Statements

Aside from standard selection formulas using the Notes® formula language, statements executed against Notes® may also be of the following format: 

"execute agent name"

where "agent name" is the name of a Notes® agent.

This functionality can be used to modify data through a post-statement Polling activity, where normally an update statement would be executed. By using this syntax, an agent that updates documents may be run. This is an IBM® Lotus Enterprise Integrator® (LEI)-specific formula language enhancement to account for the fact that non-selection formulas cannot be used as LEI statements.

The "execute <agent>" statement syntax requires a sufficient access level to perform the desired actions and access the agent.

The agent must satisfy the following requirements:

  • Uses a shared agent
  • Is run manually from Actions menu or manually from agent List
  • Is run on all documents in database or is run once
  • Does not use simple actions
  • Cannot be view-based, that is, specified as "run on selected documents in view" or "run on all documents in view"

International Character Considerations

When using international character sets such as German, where the comma character is used as the decimal delimiter, the comma character cannot also be used as a list delimter.

LEI Replication of Notes®

When you make modifications to a client for Timestamp Replication, there is no way to obtain the server current datetime. Because of this, time differences between the Notes® client and server are relevant. If the client is later than the server, then some changes may not be picked up until the next replication. If the client is earlier than the server, then some changes may be missed. If synchronization of time is not possible between client and server, then making the Domino® server slightly earlier than the clients will prevent documents from being missed.

When specifying a view to use (View property of Notes® Connection Options), that view must be of a particular LEI format, and the keys indicated in the view are irrelevant (they are taken from the activity view keys, regardless of the activity). If the view is not of the correct format, then it will be modified by LEI, using the AlterView property of the Notes® Connection Options. When a view is specified and the view is not of the correct format, then it will be recreated for the proper result set. For this reason, do not use a view which is used for other purposes because it will be overwritten. When no view is specified, a temporary view is created for the duration of that activity and a message is written to the log recommending that a permanent view be used. When using a view name with Timestamp Replication, the same view name is used between replications, but the view is still altered each time since it is categorized based on the last replication timestamp.

Notes® Form Creation

Notes® form and field attributes, such as field formulas, help text, and formatting, will be set as defaults when LEI creates a new Notes® form.

Note: When you use the "Create Target Metadata" option on Direct Transfer, Archive, and Replication activities to create a new form within a Notes® target database, do not have the Notes® target database open while the activity is running. The new form is not available until the database is closed and re-opened. Errors will result if you try to access the newly created records before the database has been closed and reopened.

Notes® @ Functions

The following @ commands cannot be used in any Notes® formula specified in an activity. They are not supported except through the Notes® interface:

  • @DbLookup
  • @DbColumn
  • @Command
  • @MailSend
  • @Prompt
  • @DDEInitiate
  • @DDETerminate
  • @DDEExecute
  • @DDEPoke

Depositor Level Access

When the LEI Server connects with Depositor level access, documents in the database are not visible. Any selection results in no documents. One effect is that overwriting or truncating data will not find any documents and therefore not remove them.

Moving Text List Data over Different Platforms

Notes® databases store data in canonical format (byte ordering), which is platform-independent. LEI automatically converts data to the host platform's byte ordering when read from Notes®, and to canonical format when written to Notes®. (Composite data is an exception: It is always left in canonical format.) As a result, all Notes-format data outside of Notes® is considered to be in platform byte ordering native to the host format, allowing users to ignore the implications of canonical byte ordering.

Moving data between Domino® servers and Notes® and other databases does not usually pose a problem. However, in the case where data is moved from one Domino® server to another Domino® server through another database, and using LEI server platforms with different host formats, list types (text list, number list, and datetime list) become corrupted. For example, you use a Windows NT™ LEI server to move a text list from Notes® to DB2®. If the data is moved from DB2® back to Notes® through another NT server, there is no problem. But if the other LEI server is a UNIX™ server, then the data is corrupted.

Notes® NUMBER Field

There is a limitation on how Connectors interpret a Notes® NUMBER field. When you use the "Create Target Metadata" option from a Notes® source, heavy precision loss may occur with Notes® NUMBER fields.